It was The Confession of Isobel Gowdie which confirmed Scottish composer James MacMillan as a major talent back in 1990; its inspiration – the brutal execution of a seventeenth-century ‘witch’ – brought from him a score in which Stravinskian violence is set alongside passages of enormous dignity and compassion, ‘an act of contrition from the people of Scotland that she never received,’ says MacMillan, ‘with folk-song and music based on Gaelic psalm-singing’. For more on Mozart and Dvorák , see 22 February.